A future without software patents

Software patents threaten users' freedom. They create legal and
financial risks that make it more difficult to develop and
distribute software. They harm innovation and hinder healthy
competition in the software market.

What are software patents?

Patents are monopoly rights, granted by the state to the creator
of a technical invention. When applied to software, patents give
the company that holds them the right to block anyone from
implementing a similar solution. Unlike copyright, patents do
not restrict the use of an expression or the code
itself. Instead, patents restrict the use of certain ideas - in
case of software these ideas consist of algorithms and
mathematics.

Bad for competition, bad for innovation

A large number of academic studies have shown that software
patents are useless at encouraging innovation. They make it
difficult for developers to write and market new programs which
compete with existing ones. Software innovation is incremental,
as new ideas build on older ones. If an old idea is blocked by a
patent, then programmers cannot use it as a basis for their
fresh ideas.

Patents are different from copyright, and arguably more
harmful. Copyright merely gives authors a monopoly on a specific
work, such as a text or a program. Patents give their owners a
monopoly on all programs that use a given idea.

Patents encourage monopolies

Most patents in the IT world are held by large companies that
have been in the market for a long time. Patents, which are
expensive to file, maintain, and litigate, give them a powerful
weapon against developers and companies that pose a threat to
their market power, in both Free and proprietary software.

Status quo in Europe

The European Patent Convention says that "programs for computers"
cannot be patented. Despite this, the European Patent Office
(EPO) has developed a doctrine saying that "computer implemented
inventions" can be patented, and has issued possibly tens of
thousands of patents on software. Due to the diversity of
Europe's jurisdictions, enforcing these patents was so difficult
that it was almost never done. This protected Free Software
developers in Europe from the patent system's worst excesses.

Under extraordinary pressure from the Free Software community,
the European Parliament in 2005 rejected the software patent
directive, which would have allowed patents on computer programs
outright. Since then, efforts to make software patentable have
shifted towards creating a "unitary patent" system for
Europe. Under this system, the EPO would have greater
independence to implement its patent-maximalist doctrine. The
unitary patent system is also meant to make it easier to enforce
patents. This raises the threat level for Free Software
developers considerably.

How FSFE fights software patents

FSFE's goal is to abolish patents on software once and for
all. This will take a lot of time, and a lot of hard
work. Until we achieve this goal, we are working to limit the
risks that patents pose for Free Software developers. We raise
awareness for the harm which software patents cause with
policy makers and businesses. We are shaping public policy at
all levels to limit the impact of patents on software. We
educate regulators in dealing with patent-based threats to
competition, and are closely monitoring how the implementation
of the unitary patent system in Europe affects software
developers.